Land reform: farming needs to address economic and environmental functions

The issue of environmental goods and services needs to take a multifunctional approach which recognises the distinct economic, environmental and social functions of farming. The concept of ecological goods and services refers to the transformation of natural capital into products of value to people.  Thus there is need for a clear distinction between the broad concepts of the multifunctional and environment component of environmental goods and services. At the moment in Zimbabwe farmers have been focusing on the economic function at the expense of the other two equally important functions.

The main functions of agriculture can be put into three broad categories which are economic, environmental and social. The economic functions of agriculture are assigned a value by the market since they generate tradable goods. However it is often difficult to assign remuneration for environmental and social functions in the absence of the demand and supply mechanisms. It is important to note that market failure may occur as a by-product of insufficient production of environmental and social goods and services due to their non-marketable and non-tradable nature.

The economic functions of agriculture are mainly food production, fibre production, agric-tourism and rural employment, the environmental functions focuses on ecological goods and services (air and water quality, climate regulation), landscapes and biodiversity. The social functions include preserving traditional knowledge and existing assets, maintaining land occupancy and animal welfare.

The question to pose is do the newly resettled farmers have perfect information on this important function of agriculture? The concept of ecological goods and services encompasses ecosystems, provision of good quality water, climate regulation, maintenance of animal and plant biodiversity, prevention of floods and other natural catastrophes, protection against soil erosion and other such services. Our new farmers have been working extremely hard and the economic benefits have started bearing fruition. However it is imperative not to neglect the environmental function which is an integral part of farming. Tobacco farmers have been performing extremely well with the economic function however the massive deforestation that has accompanied this economic function at the expense of the social and environmental functions.

Farmers can provide environmental goods and services through agricultural practices which favour the maintenance of ecosystems natural functions. The farmers adopt agricultural practices which will not leave the soil bare as a way of promoting the provision of environmental goods and services such as erosion protection and water filtration. Farmers can limit pollution or harmful practices by reducing the use of pesticides. All these are best practice methods but there have been counter arguments that this may result in negative externalities in this push to provide environmental friendly goods and services. They have argued that farmers adopting beneficial practices do not directly generate environmental goods and services but rather improve the environment’s ability to provide them. One could however counter-argue that what is the difference? Let us look at the example of good practice of farmers adopting winter cover crops which allows the ecosystem to provide protection against soil erosion. The concept of environmental goods and services is part of the environmental part of farming which concerns itself with producing positive environmental effects.

There is need for more information for farmers to enable them to pay particular attention to all the three functions in a sustainable manner.